THE HORROR IN NORWAY

 Off Topic  20 Responses »
Jul 232011
 

These days, you hear the words “terrorist attack”, and the first thing that comes to mind (at least to most Americans) is yet another wanton act of destruction by some cell of Islamic fundamentalists. I woke up this morning to a reminder that the thirst for the blood of innocents isn’t limited to whackjobs who think they’ve found a green light for slaughter in the Koran. As if we needed another reminder.

It began yesterday afternoon in Oslo, Norway, when a massive explosion detonated in a high-rise office building that housed the Norwegian prime minister’s office, killing seven people. A few hours later, a man disguised as a police officer killed 84 people on an idyllic Norwegian island called Utoya about 20 miles northwest of Oslo, shooting them one by one. At the time, the island was full of teenagers attending a Labour Party youth-wing retreat. (The Labour Party is currently in charge of Norway’s coalition government.) People fled into the lake surronding the island in an effort to escape, and police are still searching the water for bodies. Norway’s prime minister was scheduled to speak at the island youth retreat today.

Police have arrested one suspect, who appears to be tied to both of these atrocities — a 32-year old, blonde, blue-eyed Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik, a frequent poster on right-wing, Christian fundamentalist web sites.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told reporters, “This is out of comprehension. It’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare for those who have been killed, for their mothers and fathers, family and friends.” He said that he had spent many summers on Utoya, calling it “my childhood paradise that yesterday was transformed into hell.”  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

VOODOO CHILD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jul 232011
 

That’s what Jimi Hendrix was, a voodoo child. What made me think about him: I just got back from being away from home for two weeks because of my fucking day job. A couple nights ago, I was standing on a sidewalk having a cancer stick outside a restaurant where some co-workers and I had just finished dinner. It’s one of those places where the music they play inside was playing on a speaker outside, too. As I stood there puffing away, lost in thought and wishing I were home, “Voodoo Child” began playing.

I hadn’t listened to that song in at least 10 years. I’d forgotten how amazing it is. It also hit me that the song is metal. Of course, it’s not really a “metal song”, but the crunchy, distorted tone of Hendrix’ phenomenal riffs and the shrieking solos on the song sure hit me that way. “Voodoo Child”  continues to play in my head, so I thought I might as well just exorcise the demon by writing this post.

Some people who read this blog will know the song immediately. For others, it will be something new. For some readers, maybe even Hendrix will be new. Whether new or old, the song is worth hearing. Guitar wizard Joe Satriani said this about it: “It’s just the greatest piece of electric guitar work ever recorded. In fact, the whole song could be considered the holy grail of guitar expression and technique. It is a beacon of humanity.” Fuck yeah, I can’t disagree with that.

So, after the jump, a few more factoids about the song, and then 3 different streams: The album version of “Voodoo Child” from Electric Ladyland, a live version as performed by The Jimi Hendrix Experience at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1969, and then a live version of the song as performed by another guitar wizard we lost too soon, Stevie Ray Vaughan. Continue reading »

I DON’T THINK PRAYER IS GOING TO HELP THIS DUDE, DO YOU?

 Metal News  1 Response »
Jul 222011
 

Pathology is a brutal death-metal band from SoCal. I’m a fan, partly for reasons that don’t have much to do with the music. Jonathan Huber, Pathology’s vocalist, used to be the frontman for Seattle’s I Declare War, and I had fun watching that band rise up from their starting days playing local gigs to their current prominence on the deathcore scene. I also had fun watching Jonathan periodically destroy himself in one Seattle mosh pit after another.

Pathology’s new album, Awaken to the Suffering, will be their first since Huber joined the band. It’s scheduled for release on September 13 via Victory Records. Yesterday, courtesy of a tip from NCS reader Utmu, I discovered that the band has now released the cover art for the album, created by the awesome Pär Olofsson. I couldn’t resist posting about it. Just feast your eyes on the grisliness above — and imagine the feasting that those monsters are about to enjoy.

After a festival in California and a few headline dates in Texas beginning August 26, Pathology will start a nationwide tour as support for Grave and Blood Red Throne, and Gigan is also on the bill. That will be a grisly, blood-drenched, head-busting extravaganza. The schedule is after the jump. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: INSISION – END OF ALL EP

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Jul 222011
 

(Yesterday’s SYNN REPORT brought us almost up to date on the discography of Sweden’s Insision. Today, Andy Synn finishes the job with his review of the band’s new EP — End of All.)

It’s always a great thing to be able to draw comparisons between the physical art that adorns a band’s release and the music contained therein. The cover for the EP melds elements of gruesome, physical morbidity and disturbing, spiritual horror, sick and decaying human figures haunted by tormented, ghostly faces displaying unimaginable terror and suffering  – condemned to the void and an eternity of pain that goes beyond the physical realm.

Echoes of this duality permeate the EP, mixing as it does elements of the band’s early, gore-soaked malevolence with their more recent forays into transcendent, inhuman malice. Cold and dehumanised in its fury, this is the sound of a band teetering on the edge of madness, unable to convey the extent of the horrors they have seen or the agonies that they have suffered.

The skulking, horror movie ambience of the intro builds an eerie death-march which serves as the calm before the chaos storm of “Expire” is unleashed. Seething with misanthropic passion and deadly intent, its fractured, ragged guitars scrape and weave through a series of crooked twists and turns, while mind-bending leads and helter-skelter drums spin their tale of inevitable collapse. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 14: INSISION

 Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT  10 Responses »
Jul 212011
 

(NSC scribe Andy Synn turns in his 14th SYNN REPORT with a focus on the discography of Sweden’s Insision.)

The grotesque, mutated beast calling itself Insision was expelled from the womb in 1997, an unnatural combination of blood-soaked Floridian death metal violence and Swedish death metal malevolence. Since that time they have unleashed upon the world one EP, 3 albums, and numerous split releases with like-minded deviants. Though perhaps some of you may have heard their name due to the presence of renowned metal author Daniel Ekeroth on bass (although he has recently departed due to his hectic publishing schedule), the group have also shared stages with death metal royalty like Suffocation and Vader, tightening their vicious live show through a hectic and extensive touring schedule, leaving a trail of devastation across Europe.

Yet for all their straightforward, blood-drenched barbarism, to dismiss the group as merely another in a long line of Cro-Magnon misanthropists, eager to express their own bile and misogyny through the medium of down-tuned  brutality, is to miss out on the subtle, insidious growth the band have demonstrated since their inception. From their early years where an unfocussed, yet unrelenting attack was the key to their sound’s success – giving their audience little time to think and inspiring a visceral, instinctive reaction from their willing victims – the band have steadily developed their technical prowess and compositional skills, constructing an ever more warped and twisted vision of angular, incorporeal guitar work and bone-cracking drumming.

Their sound evokes ungodly visions of towering monoliths of mangled flesh and distorted bone sculptures, their progression from thuggish nihilism, through psychotic, serial killer chic, to the possessed ravings of their current, demonic incarnation evident in the channelling torrents of iniquity and incoherent horror which flow through and tie together each album they have regurgitated from the depths of their decaying souls.  (more after the jump, including sample songs with which to wreck your ears . . .) Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BURNING GHATS’ NEW EP

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  14 Responses »
Jul 202011
 

This is the third time we’ve written about Vancouver’s Burning Ghats. Previously, we reviewed their initial three-song demo last July (here), and then we reviewed their first EP — Fool’s Gold — last September (here). Now, the band have a second EP scheduled for release on August 2. It’s called Different Names for the Same Face. As in the case of the band’s first two releases, it features eye-catching artwork by the band’s bassist, Cam Strudwick (only half of which is visible up above — we’ll show you the rest later).

I had to think carefully about where and how to listen to this new EP. The first time I cranked up the volume on Fool’s Gold, it took me hours to get my cat down off the ceiling, I found a hole in the wall curiously shaped like my head, and I’d busted up a bunch of furniture but didn’t remember doing it. On the plus side, the music killed all the insects in my house and left them liquified in a pool of their own guts.

This time I decided to take precautions and just listened to the EP’s five songs through headphones. While tied to a chair. With a piece of rawhide between my teeth so I wouldn’t bite my tongue off. Actually, I couldn’t find a piece of rawhide, so I just used one of my cat’s chew-toys. I made it all the way through the EP without damaging any more furniture, except for the chair. I did bite through the chew toy. I’m pretty sure I swallowed part of it. My cat is pissed.

After the jump, I’ll try to explain the experience. And guess what? We also have the pleasure of premiering the EP’s first song for your listening pleasure — though we take no responsibility for any injury that may occur to your person, property, or pets. Continue reading »

ALL SHALL PERISH: “THIS IS WHERE IT ENDS”

 Reviews  5 Responses »
Jul 202011
 

(NCS contributor Israel Flanders has found an album by a deathcore band that he actually likes — a lot.)

All Shall Perish is one of those deathcore bands everyone always tells you DON’T suck massive loads of horse shit through a straw, at least from my experience.  If I get into a conversation with someone about whether such a thing as “good” deathcore exists, this band always is mentioned.  I never really checked them out before, but for purposes of this review I actually tracked down the discography up until now and listened to it to evaluate this new album, This Is Where It Ends.  My conclusion: All Shall Perish sucked massive loads of horse shit through a straw . . . until this album.

There is a HUGE line-up change here to take into account, and that is Jason Richardson, now of Born Of Osiris, leaving and in-coming a guitarist by the name of Francesco Artusato.  He put out a solo album recently before this album, and if you are familiar with that solo album you know this dude DESTROYS UNIVERSES!  But to get back on topic . . . this album rules.

This is a whole new band.  The musical similarities between this and their last album, Awaken The Dreamers, are almost nil, if not totally absent.  There is a lot of speed here, a lot of ultimately pure melodeath moments, and a good dose of that death metal atonality, but it feels genuine here — when it comes to the death metal elements on this album, I don’t get that manufactured, half-assed deathcore feel I usually complain about.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »

CLIFTON SAVES THE SPACE VIKINGS FROM LORD TODD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 192011
 

Becoming the Archetype is a band who qualify as one of our Exceptions to the Rule: We like dem even wit all dat clean singing. Andy Synn expressed our common admiration for the band’s latest album, Celestial Completion, in this review, published here in April. For Andy, the highlight of the album was a song called “Breathing Light”.

Yesterday, Noisecreep premiered BtA’s video for that very song. It’s a Metalocalypse-style animated story, with the band members appearing as themselves, except . . . uh . . . somewhat physically enhanced and clad in Viking skins. Beardo Vikings ftw! Returning from space to Planet Earth, the boys encounter all manner of vicious minions in the service of dictatorial Lord Todd (including tentacled minions — Phro, take note) and engage in all manner of to-the-death combat with them. The outcome is in doubt until the appearance of . . . well, I don’t want to spoil the ending.

David Prindle did the video, and it’s a nice change of pace from standard metallo video fare. And the song is still catchy as hemorrhagic fever. Check it out after the jump. Continue reading »

NOCTEM: “NOW IS THE TIME FOR OBLIVION…” (AN NCS INTERVIEW)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Jul 192011
 

(NCS writer Andy Synn follows his review of the new album by Spain’s Noctem with an interview.)

After my recent review of the rather excellent Oblivion (HERE) by Spanish extremists Noctem, I have been emailing back and forth with the band’s guitarist (and general mastermind) Exo, garnering some background information on the group’s formation, transformation and the creative process which informed both their debut release and their latest album.

A thoroughly pleasant and clearly passionate individual, Exo passed my questions on to his dedicated partner-in-crime, lead singer Beleth, who has been with Exo since the band’s inception. After the jump you can read the responses Beleth provided to my email interrogation, offering his own distinct perspective on the group’s past, present and future . . . Continue reading »

NEW FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE VIDEO VIOLATED ME

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  22 Responses »
Jul 182011
 

I’ve been away from my computer all day. I blame my fucking day job. I just got back, and almost the first thing I see is a press release advising that the almighty Fleshgod Apocalypse have released a video for a song from their new album called “The Violation”. It was directed by Salvatore Perrone. I wasted no time in watching it.

I feel violated now. Man, it’s a good feeling. I would like to be violated again.

The song is more overtly symphonic than anything on Mafia, the band’s last release. It includes extravagant, high-flung flights of clean singing from Paulo Rossi that are even more prominent than his contributions on Mafia. It’s also a head-exploding rush of blowtorch death metal. It’s all of that — a combination that Fleshgod Apocalypse pulls off triumphantly, and uniquely. I fucking loved it.

The video is a head-kick to watch, too. Check it out after the jump — and then be on the lookout for FA’s appearance on the SUMMER SLAUGHTER tour, which begins tomorrow. Continue reading »

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